Browse News

Savage Love: Hopes and dreams

I am currently a senior in high school, but come Saturday, I will be a high-school grad! (Fuck yeah!) The only thing I’m worried about besides my hopes and dreams and making it in the real world? My sex life. I’m a virgin. When I go online, I see all my friends and peers having these crazy, awesome, smoking-hot sex lives. I am obsessed with this guy in my class. Like all teenage-girl crushes, I can’t get him out of my head. I could spot him on the other side of campus in all his tank-top-wearing, soccer-playing glory. I’ve been sitting in class all day thinking about all the sex we will probably never have. I want to know if it would be weird for me to ask him to hook up at a post-graduation party? I don’t care if my first time is with someone “special,” I just feel like if I don’t say something to him now, I’ll never get a chance to have sex at all, with anyone, ever. I feel like I know what you’re going to say, Dan, but take it easy on me!
—Does It Get Sexier?

First, DIGS, some research shows a link between time spent on social media and depression. The issue seems to be people comparing what they know of their own lives—which are complicated, messy and sometimes painful—with the idealized portrait others create of their own lives on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Remember: While your friends may appear to have crazy, awesome, fun-filled lives on Facebook, their actual lived reality likely includes as many sads and fails as your life does.

Something else to bear in mind: Teenagers are waiting longer to have sex, according to the Guttmacher Institute, and nearly 40 percent of 18-year-olds of both sexes are not yet sexually active. So you are not a freak, DIGS. All of your friends and peers may tell you they’re sexually active—or their Facebook and Instagram posts may imply that they’re sexually active—but the data tells us (and I’m telling you) that some of your friends are liars.

Finally, DIGS, this boy is not the last boy on earth. You will have other chances to have sex, with other people, lots. But I think you should make a pass at this boy—if not for the sexual experience, then for the experience of making the pass itself. Make it an honest, straightforward and explicit pass. (“I’ve had such a crush on you, and this is crazy, but fuck me maybe?”) If he’s interested, tell him you’re a virgin, tell him condoms are required and tell him you’d rather do it sober or soberish. If he’s not interested, well, that’ll suck. You’ll have to wait a bit longer for your first sexual experience, DIGS, but you’ll have an opportunity to practice handling rejection with grace (“Well, I still think you’re a great guy, and I hope things won’t be awkward between us”) and you’ll see that rejection isn’t the end of the world—or the end of boys, either. Good luck!

My fiancé came home, and his beard smelled like pussy—the sweet, healthy kind. He denied having his face in someone else’s business. Is there anything else it could have been? Help!
—Sick In Minneapolis

I have no idea what pussy smells like, SIM, as I’ve never had my face in that business. So I can’t really tell you what else it could’ve been—Clamato? Caramel corn? Crème brûlée?—because I have no frame of reference. But I’m running your letter in the hopes that otherwise-cute hipster boys will be inspired to shave off their ugly fucking beards to escape justified or unjustified accusations of infidelity.

On the Lovecast, Dan and a global-health doctor talk about the pros and cons of Truvada: savagelovecast.com.